


White Blank Page

by Linguini



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aging, M/M, Non-graphic crimes against children, Old Age, Slice of Life, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-22
Updated: 2010-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:38:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linguini/pseuds/Linguini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Relationships aren't all about sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Blank Page

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mumford and Sons. Special thanks to [](http://flying-android.livejournal.com/profile)[**flying_android**](http://flying-android.livejournal.com/), [](http://cutebutpsycho99.livejournal.com/profile)[**cutebutpsycho99**](http://cutebutpsycho99.livejournal.com/) and the Doc (you know who you are).

  
Looking back, he’s not quite sure why he is so disappointed. Knowing the man as he thought he did, he should have been able to predict that the case wouldn’t be enough to capture his attention. Instead he expected…well he doesn’t know _what_ he expected, but it certainly wasn’t the cold disdain he received.

Even more disturbing is that he finds himself standing on the steps of a Montague Street flat without the slightest clue how he’s arrived here. Lestrade tromps up the staircase and into Sherlock’s flat, not bothering with knocking or announcing his presence.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at?”

A small part of him is glad to see the dark head pop up and the quick flash of confusion cross Sherlock’s face. But before he can even cross the room, the look is gone. That smug condescension only sends flames of anger down his spine.

“Don’t even try it. I know exactly what your problem is. The case wasn’t exciting enough. It wasn’t complex enough. It wasn’t _hard_ enough for you. And so you left us to hang when we really needed you. Constable Watkins is in the hospital because of you. You! Because you couldn’t put aside your childish desire for attention for one second to help us catch a cop-killer. Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we mere mortals can’t always bring you an offering fit for your eight-hundred pound brain. And I’m sorry that I need to come to you. And I’m sorry that me asking wasn’t good enough.”

To his everlasting shame, his voice breaks at the end. Sherlock merely looks on, giving nothing away. Lestrade feels a searing pain in his chest and turns to leave.

“What do you want?” The voice is hard. “I cannot be other than I am. I cannot force my brain to engage. I have no control. What do you expect from me?”

Lestrade pauses with his hand on the door. “A flicker of humanity.”

The door does not slam on his way out.

*****************************************************

“This is such a fucking cliché.” Donovan turns to him in surprise. “What, you don’t think I knew that word?”

“I know you knew that word. I just was expecting a French accent.” The wan joke falls flat. Even the most seasoned officers have gone a little pale during this case. Lestrade finds his heart sinking a little more each day as they fail to find the sixth missing boy.

They’re currently standing in an alley, sharing an umbrella as the rain pours down. The coroner approaches, but they don’t need to hear the words to know the situation. Another family broken. Another black eye for the Yard. Another sleepless week.

“254 Regents Road.” The hoarse voice takes the pair by surprise. Lestrade turns and sees the closest thing to a ghost he imagines he ever will.

Sherlock merely stands there, ignoring the rain slipping down his collar and into his eyes. He has obviously had even less sleep than the Inspector and seems to have dropped a stone since they last met.

Lestrade is too exhausted to feel surprised. Instead he discretely tugs Donovan over so their umbrella covers the younger man as well.

Sherlock sways a little and repeats. “254 Regents Road. You have 47 minutes.”

The police waste no time and 42 minutes later twelve young boys are reunited with their parents.

Lestrade again finds himself on Montague Street, mounting the stairs to the small rooms above. As he nears the top, he hears frantic pacing and frenzied muttering. Sherlock’s frazzled appearance is not unexpected. Nor is the ceaseless pacing.

With a jolt, Lestrade realizes that this is what he loves most about the man. That when his mind chooses to engage on a case, he can do no less that give his all. The detective imposes himself directly in Sherlock’s path, pulling him into a tight squeeze. It’s not a hug in the traditional sense, but a way for Lestrade to demand all of the younger man’s considerable processing power.

Eventually, the frenzied muttering dribbles to a halt and Sherlock sags against Lestrade. He’s unusually quiescent as he’s trundled onto the couch and covered with a blanket.

“Stay” he whispers, and Lestrade’s heart swells with affection. He eases himself down to sit on the floor beside the couch, leaning his head against the younger man’s shoulder. They stay like that as the shadows lengthen into darkness and the darkness into light.

*******************************************************

Six months after John Watson moves in with Sherlock Holmes, he finds himself receiving one of the oddest propositions of his life. It’s not that he’s squeamish about sleeping with other men. It’s that Sherlock seems content to stand in the background while Lestrade attempts to find John’s tonsils with his tongue. As a doctor, he's eminently qualified to inform the inspector of their location, but that would require talking, which would require moving. And he's more than content to stay exactly where he is. Eventually, they tumble to the bed in a sprawl of arms and legs and sleep the sleep of the thoroughly satiated.

The second time the three of them share a bed is a sleepless one--for John at least. Lestrade declares an early night and disappears into the bedroom. John doesn’t think much of it, after all the man _has_ been working himself nearly into the ground lately. But then he sees the slightest flicker of an eyebrow from Sherlock and moderate concern flickers into life.

He forces himself to wait an hour before following the older man, and is surprised to find him deeply asleep and curled into the smallest ball John has ever seen a grown man make. As he reaches to pull the covers up, his hand brushes against Lestrade’s arm and the heat there is shocking. It doesn’t have the same quality as a fever, though, so his medical instincts are not alarmed.

“He’s fine, but I wouldn’t advise sleeping too closely to him.” John thinks he detects a hint of fondness behind the dry words, but he hasn’t known Sherlock long enough to be sure. He watches, intrigued, as the taller man slides on the bed from the foot, placing himself on his back as far as possible from the sleeping inspector.

Sherlock yawns broadly and instructs John to pick a spot before sliding off nearly instantly into sleep. With a mental shrug, he mimics that strange foot-of-bed ingress and settles himself between the other two men, being careful to maintain separation from Lestrade. The heat radiates off the older man as John finds himself tugged down into slumber.

He spends the night waking every twenty minutes or so as Sherlock shifts in his sleep to ground his hands on his companions or Lestrade moves closer and the heat becomes unbearable. The night is interminable, but John has perfected the expectant waiting that is the hallmark of doctors and soldiers alike.

Three months later, when he is forced to travel alone to a medical conference in Edinburgh, he is surprised to find the bed too cold and too big.

***************************************

It’s a rainy Sunday morning and none of them have any desire to go out. Sherlock is on the tail end of a rather nasty cold, but his voice has cleared up and all that remains is a slight headache and a bit of a wheeze. He’s sitting on the floor in front of the couch, typing furiously on his laptop.

John and Lestrade are thoroughly engrossed in “Match of the Day,” spending all their time trading barbs and jabs over the season’s prospects. Neither of them is paying any particular attention to the man on the floor between them, but both unconsciously sneak peeks in his direction, evaluating health and strength and stamina.

Eventually, John drops off, stretched the length of the couch with the soles of his feet touching Lestrade’s leg. The inspector is surprised and forces himself not to shift positions and discourage this uncharacteristic physicality. John may be insatiable in bed, but when not engaged in more carnal pursuits, he is the least likely of the three of them to initiate physical contact. Sherlock has no sense of personal space, and Lestrade is likely to run his hand across shoulders or up necks when he walks behind either of them. But John is skittish even around these two and practically rabid around strangers.

Instead, Lestrade feels his eyes start to droop and lowers the sound on the television. It’s enough for him to watch his team lose. He doesn’t need to hear it being announced as it’s happening. Sometime earlier, Sherlock had shuffled closer to the older man’s leg, complaining of glare on the monitor and now his head tips over to rest against the available knee.

Lestrade reaches a hand down and rests it on top of the mass of black hair; Sherlock doesn’t like his hair being played with, but he will consent to this with muted grumbling. A small upturn of the lips is all that gives the inspector’s amusement away as he tips his head to rest on the back of the couch. The honking traffic outside and soft play-by-play on the television coalesce into a low hum. This, combined with John’s snuffles and Sherlock’s whistling breathing lull him to sleep.

They stay like that for hours until the slamming door downstairs jerks John from his sleep. His eyes soften when he looks over at Sherlock and Lestrade. The younger man has wrapped his arm around Lestrade’s leg and he’s sure the cop will be upset about the darkening patch of drool just above the knee of his trousers. But they look so peaceful he doesn’t have the heart to wake them.

Shrugging on his jacket, John heads down the stairs intending on acquiring takeout for dinner. Mrs. Hudson calls to him from the downstairs kitchen and when he enters he finds the table piled high with food from the Chinese down the street.

“Mrs. Hudson, you are a saint,” he declares as he drops a kiss on her cheek.

“I didn’t hear you boys moving about upstairs and I knew that you’d be hungry, especially those two. Poor Sherlock still sounds bunged up. And that detective inspector of yours hasn’t come home before sunrise in nearly a fortnight.”

John smiles both at her use of Lestrade’s full title and her labeling him as theirs. He’s not sure Lestrade _belongs_ to anyone, but he’s amused that she’s apparently been keeping tabs on all of them from the beginning. When he runs upstairs to wake the other two up, his suggestion that they join their landlady downstairs instead of lounging on the couch is met with surprise and approval. And when the three of them traipse down the stairs (Lestrade a little less gracefully, seeing as how his knee has fallen asleep under the weight of what he calls Sherlock’s “eight hundred pound brain”), Mrs. Hudson’s eyes widen just a fraction and the merest hint of loneliness that has been there as long as John’s known her disappears as she’s made part of their unlikely family.

***********************************************

They’re in the long winter of their lives now. Truthfully, Lestrade has been there nearly a decade before than the other two, but it doesn’t stop him from occasionally popping in back at the Yard, just to “check up on the kids.” Sherlock has made enough money to rival Mycroft’s fortune. He now spends his time as a brain-for-hire, solving the all-too-frequent cases of injustice and cruelty that inevitably occur when so many people live in such close quarters.

John and Sherlock come in from downstairs, flushed with cold but as giddy as their younger selves. Lestrade isn’t in the living room, and he’s not asleep in their bedroom, either. They finally find him slumped over the table in the kitchen, face down on a picture of London’s skyline. Sherlock flashes an evil grin at John and places his cold hand directly on the gap between Lestrade’s collar and his regulation-length hair. With a yelp, the older man’s head jerks off the table, jigsaw puzzle pieces stuck to his face haphazardly.

John laughs, and before Lestrade can move cups his chin and kisses him softly, capturing the pieces and placing them back on the table. The kiss is chaste and familiar, more statement of love than quest for passion.

Sherlock has already moved to the cups of tea Lestrade has waiting for them. Nothing has ever been formally set out, but they each have a mug that has become their own. Sherlock gathers them and makes his way to the worn couch, where the other two join him, Lestrade in the middle. John takes a sip and, with the ease of long practice, hides his disgust. Sherlock shoots him a look as Lestrade leans forward to place his mug on the table. The doctor shakes his head and cocks an eyebrow in return. Sherlock merely holds up one finger. Lestrade has forgotten how they take their tea again.

On its own, this slight memory lapse is nothing. But paired with an inability to recall details of recent cases and sentences ended before they’ve expressed a complete thought, it begins to paint a pattern. During their occasional discussions on their partner’s health, John spends most of his time reassuring the youngest of them that it’s not a big deal, merely a sign of their advancing age.

“He is the oldest of all of us, Sherlock. You can’t expect him to run full tilt all the time anymore.”

The idea that his mind could fail him in a mere decade sends a frisson of fear into his heart. But there are more immediate concerns now. None of them will live forever, and before they even begin to contemplate full retirement, Mrs. Hudson passes away in her sleep.

The funeral is a dignified affair and is attended by many people none of her lodgers know. Something in the ceremony seems to snap a thread in Lestrade, though, and he begins to talk in earnest of retirement and settling down in a cottage by the seashore. They go on a long holiday, and that seems to quell his mild panic a bit. But both John and Sherlock know he spends nights awake and alone in his thoughts. There is nothing they can do in the dark but lie as close as possible, in the hopes that they might anchor him to them for another night.

Eventually, weeks slip into months and months into years. They are all retired from active anything by now and have purchased a small cottage in the West Country where Lestrade spent his childhood. John cannot abide the sea, but the rolling hills and vast expanses soothe something in the heart so marred by bleak, arid lands.

They spend their days day engaged in their own pursuits: John finishing the final of his novels, Sherlock tending to his bees, and Lestrade gazing over the forests below. His hands are crippled with age now, the jigsaw puzzles losing their ability to keep his joints supple, but Sherlock and John have found methods of making his way a little easier.

Their home is perfectly placed at the crest of the hill, catching the sun’s final rays at it sinks into the west. As the sky turns the gentlest of pinks, John emerges from the house with a blanket. He approaches the chair and nudges Lestrade from the light doze that caught him unawares. The former inspector shuffles over, a silent invitation for John to join him in the chair. With the blanket pulled snugly around them, the two men are content, moving very little except when John moves to slip his fingers between Lestrade’s.

Sherlock eventually joins them, sitting as usual at their feet. A pair of hands descend, one atop his head and the other resting on the back of his neck. They are three men who have found contentment and peace, and in this way the three of them end their days.  



End file.
